


In Some Perfumes Is There More Delight

by unquenchable_flame



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 07:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20224249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unquenchable_flame/pseuds/unquenchable_flame
Summary: Meredith has opinions about Hawke's nose.





	In Some Perfumes Is There More Delight

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to ink_kettle for the beta!

“Your nose smells,” Meredith commented quietly, her voice little more than a rumble Hawke wouldn’t have understood if they weren’t so close, nose tips brushing gently.

“It’s known for doing that,” Hawke answered, her shit eating grin a bit sedated by her well kissed lips.

Meredith pursed her own lips. “I meant it smells badly,” she clarified, looking pointedly at the red mark across Hawke's face.

“So did I,” said Hawke, not missing a beat. “It’s not like you could say a thing, stinky,” she continued, turning her head to nuzzle at the hollow space between Meredith’s ear and jaw, where one would dab perfume. Meredith frowned but moved to allow Hawke better access.

“My odor is a minor consequence of a sacred duty,” she said, in as grumpy a manner as someone at the receiving end of a dozen butterfly kisses cold muster. “And it’s not bad, all Templars smell like this."

Hawke snickered against her neck and pulled back, allowing Meredith to see her properly. Her eyes had a way of glowing with mirth that reminded Meredith of sparkling lyrium. She wanted to drink them in just the same.

“So you’re just a bunch of stinky asses sniffling each other?” 

Meredith frowned her actual, thunderous frown at that, not just the one she kept at all times, by mere formality, and Hawke lifted her hands in mock surrender. “Hey, I’m not judging."

“This is kaddis,” she said, pointing to the red stripe across her nose. Meredith, and probably most of Kirkwall, assumed it was just blood, a crude show of power. “It smells like this so my dog can find me anywhere, so not all that different.”

Hawke’s explanation had exactly zero effect in mollifying Meredith, if anything it irritated her further. “Are you comparing me and my sworn brethren to your beast?” she accused.

“Of course not, that would be insulting,” Hawke answered, innocently. “To my dog.”

Meredith snarled, just accentuating her likeness, and Hawke threw her head back in laughter.

“Alright, alright, no shit now,” she tried, in an offer of peace. Meredith didn’t take much goading to get actually mad and leave, and Hawke didn’t want that, only a piece of good fun. She reached and buried her hands in Meredith’s hair, pulling her closer. 

Meredith resisted, obviously, by principle, jutting her chin out and making things harder for Hawke as she always did, until she relented. Hawke then brought their faces flush together, somehow closer than a kiss, noses pressed and blue eyes staring into blue eyes.

“We stink to belong with our own. It’s not so different.” Hawke said, so quiet and close Meredith breathed in the air out of her mouth, before pulling back with one of her weird smiles, weirdly fond, the kind Meredith didn’t know how to respond.

That one smile had the power to throw off their precarious, carefully kept balance, shifting the mood to a dangerous suspension.

“I should go,” Meredith declared, pulling back from Hawke’s hands and away from their tangled legs.

There was no one on the way down, as the servants made themselves scarce whenever she set foot on the manor. That is, no one but her reflection, staring back from the foyer mirror, bearing a single red spot on the side of her nose.

For a long moment, Meredith looked, no hint of feeling on her schooled features, only in her hand, halted mid air, halfway into reaching to wipe the paint off. 

Thinking better of it, and after a little effort to dislodge it from within the well fitted edges of her armor, Meredith fished a kerchief and carefully cleaned the red paint away, before tucking the cloth back and departing, leaving nothing behind.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Shakespeare's Sonnet 130


End file.
